Wednesday, May 16, 2012

No, I'll Never..

Have you ever had to eat those words? Your words?

Like all those things we said we'd never do when we had kids. And now... well let's just say, sometimes the TV is on more than we'd like.

Oh, let's take that one for instance. For the first year of Noah's life, he didn't watch a minute of TV. Not one minute in that whole year. Really he had no need to. Naps were frequent and he was busy crawling and walking. And moving every second of the day. Now... well, now... we have Family Movie Night and Cartoon Saturdays. So I've eaten those words.

What about the "No Soda" rule? No Soda! In a world that values High Fructose Corn Syrup and artificial sweeteners, soda is hard to avoid. And again we were so careful in the beginning. Even juice was watered down. But slowly and suttley, soda crept into our lives. Not into our pantry, but just a kid's soda out to dinner. Just a little at the neighborhood BBQ. Maybe a can during the ball game. Now.. well, now... we're doing serious detox to revert to our old ways. So I've eaten those words.

And the worst of all, I'll never let my kids sleep in bed with me. Never? Well, maybe not never. You see this was the rule that took the longest to break. My two older kids NEVER slept with me. Maybe once or twice if we were traveling and they had an accident in their sleeping bag. But I could count on one hand the number of nights they slept in my bed. Now... well, now... Baby Number Three loves Mommy's bed. I have a million reasons:

He's addicted to the pacifier.

He's still learning sleep patterns.

He still needs bonding time.

The list could go on and on. And I've certainly eaten those words.

Such is life. For the most part, our parenting philosophy hasn't changed. In fact, it's only grown. It's grown stronger and smarter and fuller. Some battles have been dropped and others have called for reinforcements. And I've eaten a lot of words. So before you say, "No I'll Never..." Just think of my children piled on my bed on a Saturday morning drinking soda and watching cartoons. Trust, you'll eat your words too.

4 comments:

lol My boys are 19 and 24 so i have a very long list of "I'll never let my kids..." My sister and brother in law have to remind me at least once a year that I was never going to let my children play with toy guns @@ Giving you some comment love from SITS ;)